Big Apple, Greene King?
Beer was the furthest thing from my mind, it had to be said. It was only an hour since I had been staring open mouthed through the clouds at the faraway Manhattan skyline, as we approached JFK airport. Now I was in a yellow taxi crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. I most certainly did not have my beer hat on.
In the taxi I was like an over excited dog - this was my first trip to New York - scrabbling around the back seat peering through the front, side and back windows, arching my head, trying to see the tops of those skyscrapers that just go up forever. It wasn't until we hit Central Park West that my somewhat disorientated and jet-lagged mind clicked into gear to focus at the job in hand. Ale.
There can't be many people who drive by Trump Tower, within shouting distance of the Dakota Building where John Lennon was shot, and think of Old Speckled Hen (OSH). But that is exactly what I was doing. In my line of vision was the latest monolith laid down by Donald Trump, one of American's richest and most egotistical men. But my thoughts are focused on a rich, amber, malty ale.
Why ale?
The reason? I had been invited by Greene King to examine its efforts to push OSH in the New York market. The brand has been exported there for well over 10 years, before original brand owner Morland was bought by Greene King. But this year Greene King has made the strategic decision to push the beer into the land of Frank Sinatra, Woody Allen and the Statue of Liberty (or as one of the Greene King PR department christened her: "The woman holding the thing").
Madness, you might say. After all, let's rewind a bit here. This is a beer that was first brewed some 28 years before I boarded my plane to JFK. OSH was the brainchild of the Morland Brewery in Oxfordshire - a commemorative brew in honour of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the MG car factory. It was hardly what you would call cutting edge.
The imagery is so quintessentially English, with the Fox in country gent clothing. On paper it is everything the traditional British cask ale drinker would look for in a pint - and exactly the kind of product that would surely get murdered in the harsh, unforgiving New York marketplace.
And yet coming back to 2007, there I was, waiting for a lift in a hotel just next to Central Park, about to be shown how OSH does actually work in New York. It just made no sense. I shared the lift to the seventh floor with Anthony Daniels, the actor who plays one of the droids in Star Wars, which further warped my mind. I sat in my room and wondered how this could be anything other than a publicity stunt.
Jump forward 24 hours and I had to admit that I was wrong. I found myself in a well-known English pub in Greenwich Village, called the Spotted Pig. It is allegedly a haunt for celebrities including Cameron Diaz and one of the investors involved in the venue is believed to be U2 lead singer Bono. So, in other words a place that oozes 'New York'. And here I was drinking OSH with journalists from local beer newspapers, a writer from The Sunday Times, two from Vogue, and several New York bar owners.
The occasion was a special party and pub quiz put on by Exposure PR, a New York-based company employed by Greene King. Exposure had little trouble filling the guest list, because relevant journalists really want to hear about a quirky, crafted, genuinely imported English ale. I was beginning to understand…
Cracking the market
It turns out OSH has been enjoying some success in the American market, particularly New York. And it is this fact that has led Greene King to alter its export strategy, as Neil Jardine, take home and export director at Greene King Brewing Company, explains.
"OSH is exported to 30 or 35 countries across the world - which is quite disparate, it's fair to say," he says. "The ambition had been to get it into as many places as possible, but this year we've really reviewed our strategy and decided that we should focus on specific markets. So instead of being in, say, 42 countries, we should focus on increasing distribution and sales in five specific markets."
Since Greene King acquired Morland in 1999 OSH has become one of its core brands (alongside IPA, Abbot and Ruddles). Initially it was Greene King's premier take-home product, but it has slowly gathered a strong following in the on-trade, both in bottle and on draught. And the brewer has hugely ambitious plans for the brand - Justin Adams, managing director of Greene King Brewing Company makes no apology for that.
"Bar owners here are really into imported beers with interesting flavours. And there is no reason why OSH, the UK's number one premium bottled ale, shouldn't be the number one export ale," he says. "The OSH brand has something very special about it and I really believe it has the opportunity to be an iconic brand. "We are very ambitious - I'd love to think that OSH could be to ale what Smirnoff is to vodka."
Tough competition
Bold words indeed. And Greene King has picked a particularly tough time to want to break New York - it has become one of the hardest beer markets on earth to take on, as Gregg Glaser, editor of Yankee Brew News, confirms: "Any beer without a big marketing effort behind it (such as OSH) has it tough in our speciality beer market. We have so many beers, many of them wonderful, which are available to us. Getting lost is a big risk without huge marketing/ad dollars."
A trip out into trade with Mike Battaglia, marketing manager for New York and New Jersey at Total Beverage Solutions (importers for Greene King brands in the US) was further proof of this. A visit to the Retreat Bar in Brooklyn was an eye-opener. For a start it had at least 20 beers on tap (The Ginger Man pub in Manhattan has well over 50 beers on tap!). We had several American IPA style beers - described by Mike as "super freakin' hoppy!" - and there are reports of super IPA and Imperial IPAs coming onto the market that are absolutely drenched in hops - not really OSH's style.
"There is a great appetite for these beers - it's like pushing on an open door," said Mike.He added that the craft beer market had grown 11 per cent in the last three years. "There are bars now that only serve beer - many more are heavily beer focused. They have great food, great design, lots of beers and very little focus on spirits or wine," he explained.
Ready for the fight?
So has OSH bitten off more than it can chew? Neil Jardine is under no illusions. "Getting cut through is very, very hard because there is a lot of noise out there. You go into bars over here and they have 30 to 40 beers on the back-bar," he said. "But the push on OSH is not really a conscious decision. All our portfolio is available here; OSH just sells more - it is 60 per cent of portfolio in the US. Hen is the one they want."
And if I wanted proof that New Yorkers want beers that are English, quirky and tasty, it was provided on my first morning. An increasingly fractious drive through Manhattan with Mike led us to Times Square. And there we drove past a very large billboard of hip hop artist P Diddy - as big an aspirational celebrity as you could find. With his arms aloft, he looked like he owned the square. But plum next to him was an equally large billboard advertising Newcastle Brown Ale. It's a long way from Newcastle to New York, but it just shows what can be done.
It was author EB White who said "no one should come to New York unless he is willing to be lucky". Well, Greene King certainly is that. But more than that there was a real buzz around the brand - there was an unmistakable sense of excitement from brand owner to PR to distributor to consumer about OSH. It will be fascinating to witness Speckled Hen's continued march on the Big Apple.
How an American PR agency took on a very British ale
Helen Hamber, account director, Exposure USA:
"It's been great to work with Old Speckled Hen
